Always Darkest
by Astralis
Summary: After everything that happened on Tegalus it takes a while to put the broken pieces back together. Sam/Jack, spoilers for 'Ethon'.


After Tegalus.

After Prometheus.

After Prendergast.

Sam gets back to the SGC and takes a shower so hot it leaves her skin pink. Landry's waiting to debrief them and yet she can't bring herself to hurry. She lingers under the water, eyes closed, and blocks out all sounds but the noise of the water hitting the steel floor of the shower.

Someone has to notify the families of the people who died. She finds herself more thankful than ever that it's not her job.

* * *

><p>Daniel says, later, "Hey. You okay?"<p>

And Sam says "Fine. You?"

"Me too."

* * *

><p>A missed call on her cell: Jack called while they were debriefing. Sam slips away from the others and shuts herself in her lab.<p>

_Hey. Sam. I heard about – everything. Look, the IOA's chasing their tails over this and I have got about a hundred meetings but I will be there for the memorial. So I'll see you soon. Call me, if you get the chance, and I'll... call you back._

_Love you._

She listens to it three times, and then she puts the cell in her pocket. That mission report's not going to write itself.

* * *

><p>The corridors of the SGC are quiet. It was like this after Janet died, and Sam hates it.<p>

"Chevron one engaged."

They congregate in the control room. Sam stands behind Walter, shoulder to shoulder with Teal'c and Cam, and watches the gate spin and the chevrons shudder into place.

Chevron six. She's not the only one holding her breath.

"Chevron seven will not lock."

"I'll have Daedalus stop by on their way back from Atlantis. Have them take a look." Landry turns away and the others follow, but Sam stands there and watches the silent, still gate a little longer.

* * *

><p>That night she stays on base. She sits on the edge of the bed in the dark holding her cell in both hands. When she calls Jack it goes straight to voicemail and she isn't disappointed. "I'm sorry I didn't call you earlier, I just -"<p>

I don't know.

It feels like talking to the air.

"I'll see you when you get here. I love you."

* * *

><p>Sam dreams of Prometheus in pieces.<p>

* * *

><p>"Chevron seven will not lock."<p>

(It was Cam who pushed to try, try, try again; Cam who looks angrier than Sam's ever seen him.)

Sam walks away and sits beside Teal'c in the locker room and listens to him say nothing. It makes more sense than everything everyone else is saying. She wipes away the tears that pool in her eyes, and then he hugs her.

* * *

><p>SG-3 comes back through the gate with news of two more planets that have fallen to the Ori. Sam turns away.<p>

She's not sure what tires her more. Fighting, or losing.

Woolsey arrives to interview the survivors, so the IOA can pick over the bones of the dead and point finger at the living. Sam lets Cam do the talking, because he's as pissed at hell and she just can't bear to listen to the twisting of her own words.

She catches Teal'c's eye over the table,and tunes out the questions, and feels better.

* * *

><p>Sam retreats to her lab after a lunch she barely tasted and finds Daniel already there, tapping his fingers on the table. He'd disappeared after the briefing. "Hi," she says. "What are you doing?"<p>

"Hiding."

"Who from?"

"Woolsey."

She pulls over a spare chair and sits down beside him. "Yeah. I think he's got what he wanted."

Daniel shrugs. "Is Jack coming out for the memorial?"

"Mm. Assuming, of course, that nothing dramatic happens between now and then."

"Tell me to butt out if this is none of my business," Daniel says. He replaces the tapping with clicking a ballpoint pen on and off. "Is everything okay with you guys?"

Sam thinks of the sound of his voice (_I love you)_ and remembers what she calls _the first night_, kissing him on the dock in Minnesota. "It's fine," she says. "It's just hard."

* * *

><p>Another night, another dream. She races through endless decks and corridors, searching a dead ship for something she can't define, and wakes tired.<p>

Today is the memorial. Dress blues and shiny shoes and perfect hair, ready to lie lie lie about all the things outsiders can't know about. (Looking at herself in the mirror she remembers Fifth, and Pete, and thinks that she should have slept at home because she can't breathe at the SGC.)

She rounds a corner, and there's Jack. The sudden rush of emotion takes her by surprise because of course she misses him, she always misses him: but somehow, he belongs here. She can never quite picture him in Washington.

"General."

"Colonel."

General Landry and Jack's aide nod at her, and move off. They're left alone standing in a corridor and it's ridiculous that they can wake up together but they can't touch in public. For a moment, Samantha Carter hates the United States Air Force.

"You okay?" Jack asks.

"Fine," she says. It's neither the time nor the place to tell him things she hasn't figured out, and she may as well get a head start on the lies. It's not as if he's likely to believe her.

"You know, I accidentally cancelled the budget review they wanted me at this evening and so I figure, no point flying back to DC until the morning."

"Subtle."

"I thought so."

Last time they shared a bed like a normal couple was right after Sam returned to the SGC, when they were just getting their heads around the Ori threat, and Jack had come out for the weekend. She'd spent hours that weekend curled up against him watching mindless TV as he ran his fingers through her hair and they made promises they knew that the universe might not let them keep.

Jack looks after Landry and the aide. "Look, I should -"

"Yeah, I know."

* * *

><p>Colonel Lionel Prendergast, United States Air Force.<p>

Killed in action.

* * *

><p>Cam disappears partway through the wake, and when a message arrives from Daedalus confirming what they've all known about Tegalus, Sam loses her taste for cucumber sandwiches and uniforms. She's not the only one. The family's gone and people are making excuses all over the place. She's grateful for that. It makes her feel less guilty.<p>

"I'm going to go," she tells Daniel and Teal'c, who look like she feels. Jack is across the room with Reynolds and Landry. She nods at him, and leaves.

* * *

><p>Jack turns up on her doorstep an hour later. Sam's spent the time paging through the bills and junk mail that had arrived while she was hiding from the world, disposing of yet another dead pot plant, and aimlessly pacing her house, too unsettled to accomplish much of anything.<p>

"Hey."

"Hi," she says, standing aside to let him in. She should arrange to get him a key. He goes to change out of uniform, and while he's gone Sam makes coffee neither of them get around to drinking. They sit side by side on the couch and don't quite touch, with their coffee cooling on the table in front of them. "It was a good service," Sam says, because someone has to say something, someone has to acknowledge what brought them here.

"Yeah, it was. Sam - " He's cut off by the ringing of his phone, the one he can't ever turn off lest a bureaucratic or alien nightmare should suddenly arise. "Damn it."

Sam looks away, and then back at him. "You should answer that."

"I know. I'm sorry," Jack says, and vanishes into the study with the phone. Sam stays where she is, and out of some instinct hugs her knees to her chest. She hear Jack's voice, tone but not words: he's annoyed, and that means that whatever this is about, he doesn't think it's important. She breathes a little easier.

"I'm sorry about that," Jack says again, emerging from the study. He drops the phone onto the coffee table and sits down again, this time close enough that his body presses against hers.

"Everything okay?" There are things he can't tell her and they both know it, but at least asking seems like the right thing to do.

"Mm." Jack shrugs. He looks tired, and older than she remembers. "We're going to be dealing with the fallout from Tegalus for a while, that's all."

"So we screwed up and you get to pick up the pieces."

"The only people to blame are those idiots on Tegalus," Jack says. He tucks an arm around her. "Come here."

Sam goes with it, putting her head down on his shoulder. For a moment, the world is suddenly better. "I miss you out there."

"Are you okay?"

Sam shrugs, because there is no short answer to that question, and because the long answer is too much to dump on Jack right now. "I'm glad you're here," she says, which is true enough.

Jack kisses the top of her head. "Me too. Sam," he says, and suddenly whatever it is she can't bear to hear it.

She's tired of fighting, and tired of war, and tired of losing, and tired of the undercurrent of dull fear that is everywhere at the SGC. They iwon/i. They iwon/i, for God's sake, they defeated the Replicators and the Goa'uld at a cost she can't even begin to count, and they were supposed to get a happy ending.

In the back of her mind, Prometheus – the ship she built, and lived on, and loved - ends in fire.

Sam lifts her head and turns to Jack and kisses him, hard. She ignores the surprised sound he makes and swings herself around to straddle him, landing harder in his lap than she'd intended. It's never been her coping strategy and she has no reason to believe it's ever been his, but this is their brave new world.

It takes a few seconds before one of Jack's hands ends up in her hair and the other presses against her hip, and then he's kissing her back with an equal intensity. She can feel him responding to her now, his body moving under hers and she feels alive again for the first time in months, real, vibrant. Her hands work out on autopilot and instinct, reaching for the hem of his shirt, brushing his warm skin as she works it up and over her head. She can do this. They're good at this.

The shirt lands on the floor and she leans in to kiss him again but he dodges the kiss, pressing his forehead against hers, his breath rough and loud. Sam stops, instantly cold, unsure, disoriented, her stomach suddenly heavy.

In contrast his voice is light and reassuring, his words interspersed with kisses. "Can we take this somewhere else? As awesome as this is, you, me, the couch, I'm getting a little old for this."

Her brain takes some time to catch up, and then comes relief. "Okay. Yeah." She slips backwards and stands up. "Okay. Come on then."

* * *

><p>Sam is warm and limp, sprawled partly on top of Jack, her head on his chest; only half awake, half focused on the world around her. With her eyes closed she brushes her palm across the skin of his belly, keeping herself in this blissful moment. His fingers are playing, almost absently, with her hair, and she can feel his chest rising and falling with every breath.<p>

Outside her windows it's late afternoon and the world carries on as usual, uncaring.

"I do miss you," she says, repeating her earlier statement, because for some reason it's important to get that into his head. Because that's one of the easiest things to say, and it also happens to be true. "Cam's great but he's not you."

"You led SG-1 for a whole year without me."

"But you were still there when we came back through the gate." Of course, she wasn't sleeping with him back then. She wonders, if she had to choose, which she would pick. 'All of the above' has never been a viable choice.

"Mmmmm." Jack tugs gently on her hair, and Sam lifts her head to look at him. "We're not dwelling, remember?"

It takes her a few seconds to figure out what he's referring to. "Huh. Yeah." She sets her head back down; she's comfortable like this. "You know I love you, right?" She knows the answer.

Jack tightens his arms around her. "Right back at ya."

One of the phones they'd carefully deposited on the bedside table starts ringing, because this is the way things always go for them. Hers. Crap. She stretches out across Jack's body to grab it and judge whether it actually needs to be answered. "It's Daniel," she says, looking at the screen. Jack grunts, which presumably means answer it. "Hey Daniel."

"Cam and I are drinking," he says, without greeting or preamble.

"Um. Okay."

"We shouldn't be drinking on base."

"Probably not."

"Are you guys busy?"

"Um," she says again, because she'd rather not discuss this with Daniel, and she's pretty sure he's asking if they can come over and presumably, continue getting drunk in her living room. She looks up at Jack. "Are we busy?"

"Are they bringing pizza?"

Sam rolls her eyes at him. "Jack wants to know if there's pizza."

"And cake."

"And cake."

"We can do pizza," Daniel says, obviously conferring with someone in the background. "And cake."

"Okay. Just give us half an hour or so, okay?"

Daniel laughs. "Huh. Sam."

"Shush. And make sure Teal'c drives." She hangs up and tosses the phone back onto the table. Well, they should at least eat dinner, and Jack hasn't seen Daniel and Teal'c for a couple of months. "You sure you don't mind company?"

"I'm hungry. And thirsty."

"I suspect there's going to be beer involved."

"Well, beer is traditional in these circumstances."

Sam doesn't ask exactly which circumstances he's referring to. "I'm going to take a shower. And no, you can't come, because last time you did I ended up with a massive bruise on my hip that I couldn't explain to Dr Lam."

"Spoilsport."

She rolls off him, missing the warmth, missing the contact, and momentarily cursing Daniel. "Behave."

Daniel and Cam are definitely well on the way to drunk. Between the five of them they get through four pizzas, an entire cake, two packets of potato chips and well over a dozen bottles of beer.

No one says anything that matters, but every time anyone says anything Daniel laughs.

Sam's on the couch, feet tucked under her, slumped against Jack. He's got an arm slung casually round her shoulders and Cam keeps looking sideways at them when he thinks they're not paying attention.

Everything smells like beer.

Sam looks round the room, at empty bottles clustered on the coffee table and the floor at Daniel's feet, at Cam looking embarrassed, at Daniel with his head in his hands, at Teal'c steadily munching away on some Twinkies someone had produced from somewhere. Her head hurts and nothing feels right and it's very possible she's going to be sick.

She's suddenly sure of it. With the world a blur she extricates herself from Jack and lurches to her feet. The bathroom seems a mile away. She stumbles outside instead, and comes up short against the railing of the deck with the night air cool on her cheeks. Fumbling and out of control she grips the rail with both hands and gasps for breath as the nausea begins to subside.

Oh, God.

There are footsteps behind her.

"Sam?"

Cam. She was expecting Jack, and rubs at her eyes with the back of her hand. It comes away damp. "Yeah?"

He comes over to stand beside her and leans against the railing like he's grateful for something to hold him up. "You okay?"

"Yeah."

"Sam."

"Ha," she says, with a shaky laugh, because none of them are okay and it's a stupid question.

Cam doesn't argue the point. "So you and," he says, without finishing his sentence, waving an arm in what he apparently thinks is the direction of her living room.

"I thought I told you."

"You hinted a bit. You implied. Daniel and Teal'c implied, too. Especially when they almost had a fight in the bakery aisle at the grocery store about whether we should leave you two alone."

The nausea has subsided to manageable levels. She'd probably feel better if she threw up. "You let Daniel out in public?"

"He didn't want to stay in the car."

"Huh."

Cam says, after a moment, "We can go if you want. Jackson needs to sleep it off and I'll have a hangover in the morning."

"I'll be sober in the morning." Sam has to wipe her eyes again. "It's okay. I like having you guys here."

"What happened on Tegalus wasn't your fault."

She doesn't think it was. "It wasn't yours either. This job sucks sometimes."

"Tell me about it." Cam rubs his forehead. "It wasn't your fault and you're allowed to be sad and pissed off and whatever else you're feeling. Because you're pretty awesome and that guy in there really likes you, and if we were in a bar I'd be telling you to go home with him."

"Huh," Sam says. Either she's really drunk or Cam isn't making much sense, or both, because the two halves of his pep talk don't seem to sit right in her head. "Okay. How drunk are you?"

"Very, I think. I stopped counting the bottles. And now I have to go sit down. Excuse me." He disappears as quickly as he'd arrived, and Sam is alone again. She can hear Jack laughing.

It's cold out here.

She follows Cam back inside. Jack's having an intense conversation with Daniel that she can't make head or tail of; he reaches out a hand towards her and she sits back down beside him. "You okay?" Jack asks, for her ears only. He would have followed her if Cam hadn't.

Sam laces her fingers into his. "I don't know," she says, and Jack squeezes her hand, and tells Daniel, passionately, that he's got it all _wrong._

* * *

><p>Everything's gone quiet. Sam has her head on Jack's shoulder and her eyes shut and Daniel's long since arrived at the maudlin stage. Teal'c had produced glasses of water for everyone a while ago, but Sam's queasy stomach rebels at the thought. She's regretting at least two bottles of beer.<p>

Cam breaks the silence. "Is it always like this?"

Jack says "Like what?" and Teal'c says "It is indeed, Colonel Mitchell."

"Huh."

"Not what you were expecting?" There's no trace of humour in Jack's voice, and Sam tightens her grip on his hand.

"No."

* * *

><p>It's well past midnight by the time the guys leave. Sam and Jack stand on the front porch in the cold to wave them goodbye and watch the lights of Cam's car, driven by Teal'c, fade away into the darkness.<p>

"Come on," Sam says. "Let's go to bed."

* * *

><p>Being horizontal is a relief; the irrational absence of sleep is not. Sam lies beside Jack listening to him breathe and knows that he's not asleep either. The pressure of a hundred things she doesn't know how to say is building up inside her: she wants to run, scream, do something.<p>

"You okay?" Jack asks.

And she could lie to him or she could brush off his concern and keep pretending like she's been pretending for years, but here she is in bed with the man she loves, drunk and queasy and sad, and she's tired. "No." She sounds like a sullen teenager. If she thought slamming her bedroom door a few times would make her feel better, she'd do it.

"Come here."

She rolls against him and lets him put his arms around her, and she lies there with her nose pressed against his cheek, rubbing circles on his shoulder. "Remember what it was like in the beginning?"

"The beginning of the Stargate programme?"

"Mmmm. And we had no idea what was out there."

"Just a few bad guys with snakes in their heads and funny clothes."

"At least we always knew how to kill them, you know? There were times I couldn't see a way out but at least I knew we had a chance. And now with the Ori I don't even know if it's possible to defeat them. I look around and all I see is people dying and half the time it isn't even the priors that are doing the killing." Running out of steam now she sighs, and then has to bite back what's almost a sob. She closes her eyes tight. "I'm tired of this."

"I know. So am I."

And the thing about Jack is that he doesn't lie and promise her it's all going to be okay, because they both know the odds. And so they just lie there, sobering up, tired and scared, and somehow fall asleep.

* * *

><p>In the morning Jack shaves while she's in the shower, and then she does her hair while Jack showers, and they put last night's beer bottles in the bin to be recycled and consume coffee and dry toast and Tylenol for breakfast. Sam's not sure which feels worse, her stomach or her head.<p>

"When are you back on the mission list?" Jack asks, across the table, as if he doesn't already know and as if every couple calmly discusses travelling to other planets over breakfast.

"Day after tomorrow."

"Anything exciting?"

"Daniel thinks so."

"And if Daniel thinks so, it must be so." Jack breaks his toast in half, and in half again, dropping crumbs over the tablecloth. "I love you."

Sam sets her coffee cup down. "I know."

The minutes slide past and then Sam says, reluctantly, "We should go." Back to the SGC, back to the real world. Jack's driver will pick him up from there so he can fly back to Washington, and she'll go to work on finding a way to get the Odyssey launched three months ahead of schedule, and they'll keep fighting endless wars because someone has to.

Jack says nothing, but stands, and walks around to her side of the table. Sam rises to meet him. She finds herself watching him, studying his face and trying to commit it to memory. There's a certain sentimentality there that she's not sure she likes or trusts so she bites her lip and steps forward and puts her arms around him.

"One of these days," Jack says, hugging her back, his face pressed against her neck.

"Yeah," Sam says. "One day."


End file.
